84
THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 11, 2016
The first trio of words is clear
enough---a metaphor for the poet as
lonely pilot, navigating hazardous wa-
ters with his eyes fixed on the firmament.
The translators diverge in confronting
the word toile, which can variously mean
"cloth," "painter's canvas," or "web," with
the blank page on the writer's desk also
implied. To choose an English equiva-
lent is to eliminate the alternatives. A
decision of meaning is forced, as on a
multiple-choice test. To follow Badiou's
metaphor, the translator is the detective
who unravels the mystery, spoiling it in
the process.
English translators have employed
several strategies against this intractable
target. Some follow Mallarmé's rhyme
schemes, in order to preserve his dou-
ble identity as traditionalist and exper-
imenter. This is Henry Weinfield's ap-
proach in a collection, published
by the University of California Press.
Weinfield's solutions are ingenious,
though the e ort of inventing rhymes
sometimes causes a visible strain. Oth-
ers jettison rhyme and push Mallarmé
toward the twentieth-century verse he
influenced so heavily. Into this camp fall
Manson and, more provocatively, Bron-
son-Bartlett and Fernandez, who aimed
to "create translations that worked as
contemporary poems." Unlike most other
translators, they supply no French texts
on facing pages.
The goal is laudable, the execution
inconsistent. At times, Bronson-Bartlett
and Fernandez supply lightly modern-
ized but generally straightforward ren-
ditions of the poems, as in their crisp,
economical version of Mallarmé's son-
net in honor of Poe:
As, at last, shaped into Eternity,
The Poet rises with sword drawn,
His century aghast for having missed
That death triumphed in this strange voice!
Elsewhere, they produce a kind of fan-
tasia on the original---less updating than
rewriting. In the sonnet "Sainte," Mal-
larmé describes St. Cecilia, the patron
saint of music, as a "musician of the si-
lence" in a stained-glass window. Bron-
son-Bartlett and Fernandez introduce
"black apples of silence" into the final
lines, although there is no trace of ap-
ples in the poem. In the sonnet of the
iced-in swan, the translators insert a men-
tion of the myth of Leda and the Swan,
••
Baudelaire's essay "Richard Wag-
ner and 'Tannhäuser' in Paris," Wagner
became a dominant force in French lit-
erature. Mallarmé was fascinated by
Wagner's art of "endless melody," and
by the sight of crowds transfixed by its
spell. For the journal Revue Wagnéri-
enne, Mallarmé produced an essay ti-
tled "Richard Wagner, Reverie of a
French Poet," praising the composer's
drastic renovation of decrepit theatri-
cal traditions. He also honored Wag-
ner in one of his most aggressively ob-
scure poems, the sonnet "Hommage,"
which includes the line "The god Rich-
ard Wagner, irradiating a rite."
At the same time, Mallarmé saw
Wagner as a threat and a challenge.
The all-devouring composer was
usurping the poet's function as the
mouthpiece of humanity's primal
myths. And Wagner's myths were too
limiting, too bounded by nationhood.
Poets, Mallarmé wrote, must "take back
what is ours." They must sing of he-
roes with no name---"the Figure that
is None"("la Figure que Nul n'est").This
declaration is close to the ground zero
of modernist abstraction. Mallarmé's
tense negotiation with Wagner indi-
cates the degree to which artistic genres
can spur each other onward. Walter
Pater wrote, "All art constantly aspires
towards the condition of music." In
fact, each art form aspires toward the
condition of another, and in so doing
surpasses itself.
A are untranslatable,
their music audible only in their na-
tive tongue. The particular problem with
Mallarmé is not simply that his writing
loses lustre as it moves from French to
English; it's that the mere act of transla-
tion erases the ambiguities that throng
the text. Consider the sonnet "Salut," which
addresses a gathering of poets. Rival En-
glish translations of the last three lines---
by Manson, David Scott, E. H. and A. M.
Blackmore, and Bronson-Bartlett and Fer-
nandez---almost form a poem in them-
selves, in the manner of Stevens's "Thir-
teen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird":
Solitude, récif, étoile
A n'importe ce qui valut
Le blanc souci de notre toile.
solitude, reef, star
to whatever this is that was worth
the white disquiet o our cloth.
Solitude, barrier reef, star
To whatever merits most
Concerns born o our blank white chart.
solitude, star, or rocky coast
to things o any kind deserving
o our sail's white preoccupation.
Solitude, reef, star
These which gathered, drew resonant
And plumped the naked canvas o our craft